A Brief History of Serious Games

Phil Wilkinson ✉
( )

The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK

pwilkinson@bournemouth.ac.uk

Abstract. Serious Games are now an established field of study. In this field most
would attribute the rise of Serious Games to Clark C Abt’s creation of the term
in 1970, or indeed Ben Sawyer’s popularization of it in 2002. However, consid‐
ering the rich history of purposing non-digital games, itself preceded by discus‐
sions of purposing play that are traceable to the work of Plato, it can be said that
Serious Games is a contemporary manifestation of centuries old theories and
practices. In this chapter, we explore the pre-history of Serious Games, beginning
with the suggested purpose, and purposing of play. Throughout this historical
review we identify key in research and practice that are apparent in the contem‐
porary Serious Games field.

Keywords: Serious games · Play · Simulation-based learning · Game-based

learning · Games for social change · Games for health · Playful learning

1 Introduction
“As important new research begins in such matters as the cognitive implications of play, the
sociology of sport, simulations in education, and interaction behavior, it is vital that researchers
and students have easy access to some of the major historical and current information on the
study of games, and of play.” [1]

Serious Games as a field of study did spring into existence. There is a rich, interdis‐
ciplinary history that has converged into the current Serious Games ecosystem. Tracing
back this convergence reveals historical trends emerging from fundamental discussions
exploring the very notion of play itself. Furthermore, concepts prevalent in contempo‐
rary Serious Games discussion are often concepts from historical fields that have been
reapplied. Therefore, to take the study of serious game seriously it is necessary to
consider these historical origins. These trends and concepts are apparent when exploring
the application of games, their conceptualisation, and their evaluation.
For instance, exploring the application of games for purposes other than entertain‐
ment has a historical precedence in the application of play – especially in educational
contexts. Plato, for example, philosophised that reinforcing certain behaviours exhibited
in play would reinforce those behaviours as an adult. Indeed, it can be argued that from
the 19th century onwards it has been assumed that children’s play and games are a
developmental imperative. Seminal development psychologist Jean Piaget even goes so

© Springer International Publishing AG 2016

R. Dörner et al. (Eds.): Entertainment Computing and Serious Games, LNCS 9970, pp. 17–41, 2016.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46152-6_2
18 P. Wilkinson

far as to suggest “play is the work of children” [2] - a philosophy apparent in contem‐
porary Serious Games development. Other contexts that have become key adopters and
developers of Serious Games have a similar history.
Chaturgana – argued by historians to be the precursor to chess – developed in 7th
Century India, was the first game, on record, to explicitly apply a militaristic metaphor
to a board game [3]. Taking this as a starting point, we can then trace this militaristic
application of games to more recognisable digital Serious Games such as America’s
Army. Paralleling this historical application of games in educational and military
contexts, there are examples of pre-digital games designed to enact social change and
the governmental application of games for serious purposes. For instance, the Landlord’s
Game, created in 1902 and precursor to Monopoly, was designed to illustrate the dangers
of capitalist approaches to land taxes and property renting [3].
Interweaving this historical contextual adoption of Serious Games, both analogue
and digital, is the development of conceptualisations relating to their application. For
instance, the often repeated notion of the ‘magic circle’ developed by play theorist Johan
Huizinga was conceived to describe imaginary play spaces [4]. Additional key terms
such as engagement, interaction, or flow emerged from the fields of education, computer
scie nce, and positive psychology. These cross-over terms applied in Serious Games can
be viewed as the attempted ludic framing of theories, models, and frameworks from
other fields.
This development and dismissal of theories and approaches can be applied to Serious
Games development and evaluation. The field of Serious Games sometimes suffers for
its interdisciplinarity due to inconsistent definitions, evaluation methods, and multiple
conceptualisations. However, there is potential for Serious Games research to benefit
from the historical precedents set out by its converging disciplines. As a recent meta-
analysis suggests [5], the majority of educational Serious Games do not explicitly adopt
a key learning theory. Additionally, the same methodological problems of ecological
invalidity and prescriptive, lab-based play evaluations in the 1970s [2] are apparent in
some contemporary Serious Games evaluative studies [6, 7].

2 Chapter Overview
“Yet individuals can once again become involved, and thought and action can again be inte‐
grated, in games created to simulate these social processes. The zest for life felt at those exhil‐
arating moments of history when men participated in effecting great changes on the models of
great ideas can be recaptured by simulations of roles in the form of Serious Games” [8]

Given the intercontextuality and interdisciplinarity of Serious Games, it would be

impossible for any researcher to be familiar with the rich, dynamic history of every
informing discipline. The goal of this chapter is to retroactively apply contemporary
discussions, approaches, and applications of Serious Games onto historical precedents.
In this we will map a developmental trajectory for Serious Games research, beginning
with early philosophical discussions.
Plato’s early discussions regarding the purpose of play – and to an extent, the
purposing of play – mark a starting point in a millennia old debate. This debate
surrounding play’s purpose has direct implications for the study of Serious Games,
 A Brief History of Serious Games 19

especially in relation to educational applications. Of course part of this play-debate is

the conceptual difficulty in defining play resonated with contemporary difficulties in
defining Serious Games. In addition, lessons can be taken forward from attempts to
research and measure play during the height of the behaviourist psychological paradigm.
Paralleling and interweaving with this debate are, of course, discussions about the
applications of games. The distinction between play and games is as contentious as their
singular definitions. Application of games - specifically for serious purposes -
throughout history will be highlighted. From this we will see a pattern of purposing and
contextual adoption that emerges. Moreover, when we cast current, generally accepted
definitions of a serious game back, we can reveal a rich history of purposing games that
reflect current, formalised approaches.
The term Serious Games can be traced to the seminal work of Clark Abt [8]. Through
this work, coupled with the rising popularity of video games in popular culture, contem‐
porary uses of the term Serious Games imply a digital form. As will be demonstrated
there historically, multiple non-digital examples. For the sake of posterity this chapter
will view the Serious Games development trajectory in relation to the development of
digital Serious games – that is, pre- and post-digital. Pre-digital will include the afore‐
mentioned debates surrounding play, key examples, and related fields of simulation-
based learning. Post-digital will highlight the continuation of historical trends as they
converge on contemporary research into Serious Games.
In addition, the development of Serious Games will be discussed in relation to the
increased legitimization of entertainment games. As media theorist Henry Jenkins
suggests:
“Games represent a new lively art, one as appropriate for the digital age as those earlier media
were for the machine age. They open up new aesthetic experiences and transform the computer
screen into a realm of experimentation and innovation that is broadly accessible” [9]

Henry Jenkin’s framing of the development of the digital games field as creating
increased capacity for experimentation and innovation directly speaks to contemporary
understandings of Serious Games. It illustrates the link between the development of
entertainment game technologies and their application in Serious Games.
Finally, writing on the emerging field of pre-digital games-based learning, particu‐
larly in reference to his own city administration game Metropolis Richard Duke
suggested that “gaming is a future’s language, a new form of communication emerging
suddenly and with great impact across many lands and in many problem situations.”
[10] Converging this with Jenkin’s assertion that games are “the thing that pushes
forward innovation and experimentation.” [9], we are well positioned to take the devel‐
opmental trajectories discussed in this chapter and make reasonable speculations about
future trends.

3 Purpose of Play
“[I]f a boy is to be a good farmer or a good builder, he should play at building toy houses or at
farming and be provided by his tutor with miniature tools modelled on real ones. . . . One should
see games as a means of directing children’s tastes and inclinations to the role they will fulfil
as adults.” – [11]
20 P. Wilkinson

Plato’s proposal that play can be used to guide a child’s development and, by exten‐
sion, suggests that play can be educationally purposed [11]. However, despite this
proposal of purposing, up until the end of the 18th century play was viewed as something
to be curtailed in children. It was only with the works of Enlightenment philosophers
Friedrich Schiller and Jean-Jacques Rousseau that we began to consider play a right of
childhood [2]. Through their work we began to recognise a contemporary framing of
play as an intrinsically purposeful activity.
In play theorist David Cohen’s extensive review of play he suggests that the early
19th century saw the development of “enlightened laws [giving] children a kind of
freedom which they had never had before. If they used some of that freedom to
play, then play had to have some purpose.” [2] He argues that there is an implicit
assumption – not often examined – that play must serve some purpose, even after
removing the suggested guided structuring of play put forward by early play-based
educationalist Frobels and Montessori.
Through this ongoing discussion regarding the purposing of play, it appears there is
an increase in perceived complexity regarding play. Moving from play is a necessity for
expelling excess energy, towards an evolutionary perspective of play as the development
of skills needed for survival or the cathartic practice of primitive behaviours [2, 12]. As
playful behaviour is exhibited across the animal kingdom – with greater frequency in
youth – Groos’ evolutionary theory is still present even in neuroscientific enquiries into
play [13].
Taking an, admittedly, much broader and encompassing understanding of the
purpose of play, Johan Huzinga argued that play itself is a foundational necessity of
cultural development. In his seminal work Homo Ludens – or playing man – he begins
from a similar starting point to Hall and Groos, that is, examining what meaning we can
take from existence of play in the animal kingdom. For Huzinga this demonstrated that
play predates cultured society and play itself is culturally generative, that is “culture
arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning” [4].
In addition to Huzinga’s exploration of the play element of culture – that is how
culture itself exhibits playful qualities – he is perhaps best known for his conception of
the magic circle. This conception was an attempt to capture the physical or metaphysical
boundaries of play spaces - “All play moves and has its being within a play-ground
marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course”
[4]. In contemporary digital game studies, this notion of a distinct space in which play
happens is readily applied to the virtual spaces of digital games [14–16].
Although the magic circle has become a key concept in game studies - popularised
by game studies researchers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman [14] it has seen limited
application to Serious Games [17]. One example creates a salient discussion of the
necessity of understanding the magic circle, or how this play space can be broken, in
games-based learning [18]. Although the magic-circle can be blurry, increasingly so
with the rise of pervasive games [19], it has interesting implications for Serious Games.
For instance, the notion that boundaries between playing and not playing are “fuzzy and
permable” [14] directly speaks to the inherent tension of balancing fun and purpose in
Serious Games design [20].
 A Brief History of Serious Games 21

While the magic circle is especially relevant today, current discourse has also been
informed by other early theories of play – especially those that discuss play’s purpose.
Social learning theorist Lev Vyogtosky conceptualised play as wish fulfilment in which
children use their imaginations to free themselves from immediate situational constraints
[21]. In addition, Vygotsky believed that “[i]n play a child always behaves beyond his
average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than
himself” [21].
Vygotsky’s contemporary, Jean Piaget, argued that play affords the consolidation of
existing skills through repetition – as well as developing a sense of mastery. Counter to
the other theorists mentioned here, Piaget paid little direct attention to the role of play.
However, his focus on cognitive stages of development informs the work of psycholo‐
gists who seek to categorise play stages [2]. As such children’s play - or capacity for
specific types of play – is used as a means of assessing their developmental stage
(Broadhead, 2006). Following the work of early educational-play theorists is a pervasive
notion of play’s role in children’s cognitive, emotional, and social developmental
(Bergen, 2002; Pellegrini, 2009).
Furthermore, pretend play in which a child roleplay societal characters – a doctor or
fireman for example – can be seen as the child exploring cultural norms [2, 22, 23]. This
underlying assumption of play’s purpose is apparent in modern digital play activities –
as evidenced by contemporary discussions exploring the role of digital games in
expressing and reinforcing socio-civic norms [24, 25]. As play has been repeatedly
framed as having an intrinsic developmental purpose, this same notion of purpose has
been applied to modern digital video games [26–28].
Given the pervasiveness of this assumed purpose of play, it is perhaps inevitable the
same assumption has extended to digital games. As seminal sociologist Erving Goffman
suggests – “[t]he function of play has been commented on for many centuries, to little
avail” [29]. Reflecting this functionalist approach to understanding play – assuming that
it must serve some purpose – is the functionalised approach. Following the logic that
play must indeed be a purposeful activity, and therefore serves a purpose, it can be
assumed that play can indeed be purposed. Here we have an emergence of the key tension
of between play, fun, and entertainment and the underlying purposes of Serious Games.
Reflecting the inherent tension of balancing fun and purpose in Serious Games is the
work of French Sociologist Roger Caillois. In Man, Play and Games [30] Caillois
comprehensively develops the work of Johan Huzinga through categorizing play. For
Calliois, play existed on a spectrum from ludus (etymological origin for the term
ludology, frequently applied to the field games studies) or game to padia or free play.
He also argued here there is a human tendency to move from paida to ludus play. This
has interesting implications for the Serious Games field, perhaps an extreme example
of moving from free-play to purposeful rule-based games. In addition, it also speaks to
the historical approach of functionalising play.

4 Purposing Play for Learning

“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances into new
stages of mastery. I propose the theory that the child’s play is the infantile form of the human
22 P. Wilkinson

ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment
and planning.” [31]

Given Plato’s assertion that the play of the child shapes their development into
adulthood, in conjunction with humanistic psychologist Erik Erikson suggestion of the
developmental potential of play, it is understandable that play has so frequently been
purposed for learning. As previously touched upon, this notion of purposing play has
existed alongside the idea that play has an intrinsic – if ineffable – purpose. Revisiting
Rousseau we see that his advocacy for the rights of citizens, and for the right for children
to “eat, run, and play as much as they please” [2] touches upon a blurred notion of
children’s play as work. This notion of the child’s right to play is now legally mandated
in under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [32].
For Rousseau “to a child of 10 or 12, work or play are all one” [2]. The influence
of Rousseau’s work is apparent in the playful approach to early years’ education
pioneered by Frobel and Montessori. It is worth noting however, that both education‐
alists believed in the need for purposing, or controlling, play. Frobel’s kindergartens
predominantly used teacher-directed imaginative play. For Montessori, her often misin‐
terpreted quote “play was the work of the child” [2] referred to her encouraged practice
of object-based real-world interaction, not to free, unguided play.
This notion of harnessing the captivating nature of play and by extension the strat‐
ification of different types of play in terms of their development value has persisted. For
instance, Montessori’s focus on object-based real-world play stood in opposition to the
teacher-guided imagination-based play of Frobel [2] In the western cultures this attitude
pervades as an expectation of parents to play with their children, an expectation that
frequently places the developmental nourishment of real-world play in opposition to
digital-play.
Indeed, digital technology is often framed as destroying childhood [33, 34]. Of
course, this has direct implications for the perception of digital games as developmen‐
tally important in play [27, 28, 35]. When discussing the role of digital Serious Games
in children’s education it is worth considering this cultural context. It should, however,
be noted that this attitude is not universal. As described by Gaskins, Haight, and Lancy
[36], we can categorise cultural expectations of play’s developmental significance into
three areas.
Western society broadly fits into a cultural category of cultivating play, in that play
is actively encouraged in children. This is in opposition to ‘culturally curtailed play’,
where children are dissuaded from play; and ‘culturally accepted play’, in which play
is expected but not encouraged. Viewing the Western development of play expectations
then, it is perhaps little surprise that the expectations placed on parents to encourage
play with their children are mirrored in parents’ expectation of schools. A 2009 report
funded by the UK Government Department for education found out of 952 parents
surveyed “over 90 % [were in] agreement that young children should have fun and learn
through play at primary school” [37]. Moreover, it is worth considering that advances
in Serious Games have typically emerged from this western cultural context, particularly
the US [8, 38].
Given this expectation of younger children to learn through play perhaps explains
the prevalence of Serious Games – particularly learning games – for younger learners
 A Brief History of Serious Games 23

[39]. Of course this expectation of play-based learning has created a tension in marrying
curricular expectations and playful pedagogies [40]. It is worth recognising that just as
the popularity of purposing play for learning reflects the popularity of educational
Serious Games, there are other historical purposes of play that are reflected in contem‐
porary Serious Games. Education therefore is not the only purposing of play that directly
speaks to current applications of Serious Games.

5 Purposing Play for Therapy

“Play is the highest development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in
the child’s soul. … Children’s play is not mere sport. It is full of meaning and import”. [41]

This position of play, interpreted by early educational-play theorist Frobel, is the

core of the historical development of play as therapy. For Froebel, play can be seen as
an expression of internal experiences – especially through symbolic or imaginative play
[2]. However, the notion of play’s internal reflectivity can be traced, again, back to the
18th century work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his seminal text Emile, or On Education,
Rosseau highlights the importance of understanding children through observing them
in play [2, 42].
Tracing the historical development of play as a therapeutic medium we reveal two
justifications for play’s application here. First, as Rosseau and Froebel suggested, play
can be viewed as a window into the child’s inner experiences – a justification that is
used for current therapeutic Serious Games [43]. Secondly, it is also suggested play is
the natural behaviour of the child, so engaging in therapeutic activity through play allows
for a naturalistic approach that puts the child at ease [42]. It is interesting that this second
justification has familiar echoes in the justification for the use of games in therapeutic
settings, and indeed education [44] due to children’s familiarity and comfort with the
medium.
Given the assumption that play provides a window into the internal representations
of the child, it is of little surprise that this approach was adopted in early psychoanalytical
approaches. In fact, the first case of applying play in a therapeutic setting can be traced
to Sigmund Freud. In his treatment of a young boy suffering from a phobia he suggestion
to the parent to observe the boy’s play at home to provide insight into his mental state
[2, 42]. As well as this play-analysis approach developed by Freud – and further
expanded by Madeleine Klein - was Anna Freud’s use of play as a means of developing
child-therapist relationships [2, 42, 45].
It is perhaps the work of humanist psychologist Carl Rogers in play therapy that has
the greatest significance for play therapy today – and by extension the therapeutic use
of Serious Games. Rogers pioneered the client-centred approach to therapy, highlighting
notions of self-determination and an internal desire for self-actualisation on the part of
the client [46]. This was developed by the work of Viginia Axline who – in effect -
operationalised the humanist paradigm set-forth by Rogers in the form of child-centred
play therapy [47].
For Axline “A play experience is therapeutic because it provides a secure relation‐
ship between the child and the adult, so that the child has the freedom and room to state
24 P. Wilkinson

himself in his own terms.” [47]. Currently, this child-centred play therapy is the most
popular approach, with the largest body of research, in therapeutic practice [42, 48].
Taking this historical perspective of play therapy into account, in addition to an aware‐
ness of current practices, we can see multiple implications for the application of Serious
Games for therapeutic purposes.
The assumption of children’s natural desire to be playful in the current context of
digital games’ prevalence is often used a justification which is frequently made explicit
[43, 49]. Similiarly, the justification of play-based therapies as allowing for the child to
freely express themselves resonates with current discourse arguing that Serious Games
application affords degrees of freedom not otherwise available. Furthermore, it has direct
implications for therapeutic Serious Games developers as they consider player agency
[50], or the creation of virtual safe-spaces [51].
Blurring the line between the – admittedly already blurry – boundary of Serious
Games and serious application of entertainment games, we can see the application of
play based therapies in other therapeutic contexts such as cognitive behavioural thera‐
pies [49, 52]. There is indeed increasing interest in the use of entertainment game as a
means of building rapport, or fostering therapist-child relationships [49, 53]. However,
counter to historical applications of play as a means of developing positive researcher-
client relationships, it has been suggested that current uses of digital-play based inter‐
ventions may undermine this relationship [54].
We must acknowledge that, like playful learning and the broader Serious Games
eco-system, we have predominantly focussed on the child. However, in the current social
construction of childhood as an opportunity for play - even if it is directed - it is perhaps
now little surprise that the number of Serious Games reflect this. Returning to our orig‐
inal quotation of Plato – “one should see games as a means of directing children’s tastes
and inclinations to the role they will fulfil as adults.” [11] – we see traces of our final
historical play-precedent for Serious Games.

6 Purposing Play for Social Control

“No society has ever really noticed how important play is for social stability. My proposal is
that one should regulate children’s play. Let them always play the same games, with the same
rules and under the same conditions, and have fun playing with the same toys. That way you’ll
find that adult behavior and society itself will be stable.” [11]

Although this is third time we return to Plato, it is because his self-proclaimed

ground-breaking work has such implications for the purposing of play. In this instance
though, we refer to his specific suggestion of the need to, or the potential of, regulating
play. Play theorist David Cohen’s review of play is, at times, critical of the attitudes
informing early play conceptions [2] He argued that the work of Froebel and Montessori
were largely informed by puritan attitudes of the time, in that it was expected that leisure
time was to be spent bettering oneself. This notion frames the motivation play-based
learning less as less rooted in pedagogic rationale, and more in reflecting the societal
expectations of the time.
Prescribing playful activities, as Plato directly suggests and Cohen implies in the
approach of early play theorists, can be viewed as a means of directing and controlling
 A Brief History of Serious Games 25

children’s behaviour such that you control their developmental trajectory. This readily
reflected in the discourse surrounding cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional devel‐
opment of children through play-based learning. It can also be argued that through
prescriptive play you are able to control the development of their socio-cultural attitudes.
For play theorist David Cohen, the early work of play educationalists and practi‐
tioners was an attempt at control – a perspective reflected in Brian Sutton-Smith’s
extensive historical and rhetorical unpacking of play [55]. Between 1890 and 1920, the
American government spent $100million creating playgrounds across America. Sutton-
smith argues that this investment was predominantly a means of implicitly training
youngsters to become integrated into, and productive members of, society.
This notion of play-spaces as a means of cultivating desired cultural and societal
values can be traced to the work of Henry Curtis. In Curtis’ Education Through Play,
we see the purpose of play for social cultivation emerge – Curtis suggests that “the
idleness of the street… is morally dangerous” [2]. Developing Sutton-Smith’s argument,
Cohen surmises that “Western societies have used play to make children conform” [2].
Following this, there is indeed a rise in the use of Serious Games for changing or culti‐
vating social attitudes [27, 56, 57].
In addition, when applying this notion of control to Serious Games more broadly,
we can begin to unpack implicit societal messages. For instance, the frequently refer‐
enced America’s Army – a training and recruitment game – we can see a societal message
promoting militarism [58]. The notion of using play to encourage children to conform
can be seen as echoing, on a societal level, the application of play in mediating learning
or therapy. It can be argued that this same philosophy of purposing play as a means of
cultivating desired behaviours can be applied to Serious Games. Frequent justifications
for the use of Serious Games are their perceived ‘holding power’ [59], and ability to
engage and motivate players [60, 61].
From this we can see how this historical approach to purposing play has direct
implications for the application areas of Serious Games. Play is well established, from
the perspective of academic inquiry and socio-cultural expectations, as a means of
engaging children in educational, developmental, and therapeutic activities. Perhaps
most significant, however, is the broader approach of purposing play and games. There‐
fore, the rich history of inquiry and discussion surrounding the purpose and purposing
of play directly resonates with contemporary applications of Serious Games.
Having established that there is indeed antecedence in historical research - and
broader socio-cultural expectations of play - that informs current approaches to Serious
Games, it is necessary to narrow our focus to games specifically. The following sections
will outline approaches to purposing non-digital games, before moving on to the
purposing of digital games – or what we would recognise as Serious Games research.
First however, it is worth considering historical research into games more broadly as
there are parallels to be drawn with the contemporary legitimization of Serious Games
research.
26 P. Wilkinson

7 Emerging Study of Games

“The comparative study of games is one that deserves a high place among our inquiries into the
history and development of culture. Their origin belongs to the time preceding that of written
records; and many games were not only the product of primitive conditions, but represent the
means by which man endeavored to bring himself into communion with and to penetrate the
secrets of the natural powers that surrounded him.” [62]

The historical study of non-digital games has seen an oscillation of regard. Stewart
Culin’s seminal work in the late 19th and early 20th elevates games as something worthy
of study. Despite the historical antecedents and contemporary elevation of the signifi‐
cance of play at the time of Culin’s work, games were still seen as having limited
significance for research. This is remarked upon by W. H. Holmes, the Director of the
Bureau of American Ethnography, when reporting on Culin’s exploration of the Games
of North American Indians in 1903:
“The popular notion that games … are trivial in nature and of no particular significance as a
subject of research soon gave way, under the well-conducted studies of Mr Culin, to an adequate
appreciation of their importance as an integral part of human culture” [63]

Culin’s work preceded Johan Huizgina’s book Homo Ludens [4], Roger Caillois
work Man, Play and Games [30], and seminal games studies such as The Kissing Games
of Adolescents in Ohio [64] or Children’s Games in the Street and Playground [65].
With regards to Huizinga and Caillois especially, their work directly builds upon Culin’s
position that games are significant for cultural inquiry as their origin “preced[es] that
of written records” [62]. For Huizinga and Caillois play and games both formed and are
informed by culture, as evidenced by their existence prior to human civilization.
In theory then, it could be said that Culin’s work provide a turning point in promoting
serious academic inquiry into games. However, as discussed in the preceding section,
there is still non-trivial philosophical discussion of games. Even if this philosophical
inquiry doesn’t hold the same rigour as the ethnographic study of Culin’s and those that
followed, it still demonstrates that games were seen as worth ‘serious’ consideration.
It can be argued that Culin’s pioneering studies of games - counter to notions of
games triviality at the time - are reflected in the contemporary pioneering of Serious
Games and advocates of their legitimacy [66, 67]. Additionally, this movement towards
taking games - and Serious Games - ‘seriously’ is not a linear process but one of ebbs
and flows. As suggested by Jasper Juul [68], supported by the work of Elliot Avedon
and Brian Sutton Smith [1], there is a historical oscillation of regard for the significance
of games. When mapping this historical antecedent onto contemporary work in Serious
Games it is perhaps not surprising then that Clark Abt’s foundational work [8] was
comparatively ignored until the beginning of the 21st century.1
Within this broader academic shifting of priorities is a field specific changing of
priorities in what is considered ‘serious’ inquiry. Current academic focuses on Serious
Games can be considered interdisciplinary but there are dominant disciplines within this
eco-system. What is evident when exploring historical academic consideration of non-
digital games is there is dominance of anthropological and ethnographic approaches [1].

1
Based on number of Citations from 1970 to 1990 compared with 1991 to 2016.
 A Brief History of Serious Games 27

This stands in contrast to the current study of Serious Games research dominated by
social sciences, psychology, and, naturally, fields from computing.
What does this mean for the study of Serious Games? Firstly, like historical
studies of games, Serious Games has not followed a consistent linear path of legiti‐
misation, but instead moves in stops and starts. For instance, the Clark Abt intro‐
duced the term ‘Serious Games’ in 1970, however, according to Tarja Susi [69] and
Damien Djaouti [38] it wasn’t until 2002 that ‘Serious Games’ came into wide usage.
This dynamism is reflected in the shifting consensus on what constitutes ‘serious’
Serious Games research – that is, which research should be prioritised in the field.
Additionally, there is again historical precedent for the purposing of games – which
will be explored here - amongst the broader shifting academic landscape.

8 Origins of the Purpose and Purposing of Games

“[Here] the general position taken is that a game performs something of a bridge function in
development. It allows for the expression of given impulses but at the same time safeguards the
players by putting limits on the way in which those impulses can be expressed.” [64]

The above quote is taken from The Kissing Games of Adolescents in Ohio by Brian
Sutton-Smith [64], in this he concludes that games do indeed serve a role in children’s
development. For Sutton-Smith, games offer an opportunity for children to express
themselves in a safe-space that provides rule-based boundaries to help shape their
expressions. This notion of games as providing a space for children’s safe exploration
of necessary skills or social practices builds directly on notions of play’s purpose in their
development. There is however, a distinction to be made here that follows Roger Cail‐
lois’s conception of a ludus – paida spectrum [30].
The distinction between play and games can be centred on the introduction of
rules – systematic boundaries, taking different forms, that shape playful activities. It
is in this distinction that we move away from the perceived intrinsic purpose of free-
play, and the intentional purposing of games through the intentional construction of
game-rules. This purposeful construction of games as rule-based systems formed a
key starting position in the rise of ‘simulation gaming’ throughout the mid-20th
century.
According to Wolf and Crookall, “the modern era of simulation/gaming began in
the late 1950s” [70]. They argue that it emerged through a combination of ‘war-gaming’
practices, and new educational theories that prioritised active participation – such as
experiential learning [71]. Indeed, these same theories of experiential learning are appa‐
rent in contemporary Serious Games approaches [60, 69, 72]. Wolf and Crookall also
acknowledge a historical precedence in this as they suggest war-games were formerly
introduced in the 17th and 18th century – discounting war-themed “parlour games” chess
and Chaturanga [70].
Given this historical integration of game-based training in military contexts across
multiple centuries, it is perhaps unsurprising that this would have a role in the develop‐
ment of simulation-gaming. Even less surprising then is its consideration as the forefront
of modern Serious Games practices, as exemplified by leading Serious Game America’s
28 P. Wilkinson

Army. The rise of simulation-based learning - and the rise of Serious Games - perhaps
owes much to historical military training practices. From the 1950s onwards commercial
organisations began to adopt simulation-based learning practices.
Simulation-based learning, with its military origins and supported by the emergence
of participatory theories of learning, was seen as a necessity given the rising complexity
of real-world practices. However, simulation-game rules could be constructed to accu‐
rately reflect complex social, economic, and political systems. Writing on the subject,
simulation-based learning pioneer Richard Duke suggests that:
“Gaming/Simulation is one device that is useful for presenting a dynamic model which is an
abstraction of complex reality …. Games can be viewed as abstract symbolic maps of various
multidimensional phenomena.” [10]

In Duke’s writing we can again see a justification for the use of non-digital games-
based learning practices, which also hold true for modern Serious Games practices.
However, it can be suggested that Serious Games extends and builds upon this justifi‐
cation, as digital technologies offer greater representational affordances.
As touched upon earlier in this chapter, Duke became an advocate for simulation-
based learning practices, as evidenced by his seminal book Gaming: The Future
Language. Here again we can draw parallels with the same - at times - evangelical
rhetoric surrounding the ‘power’ of Serious Games, and an anticipatory excitement for
their potential across multiple domains [6, 57, 69, 73–76]. Writing on the subject of
Simulation gaming in 1995, taking a historical perspective of the preceding 35 years,
Wolfe and Crookall identified several impediments to the field - directly related to this
sense of interdisciplinary excitement:
“The field [Simulation-Based Learning] often celebrates its interdisciplinary nature and recog‐
nizes it’s diverse origins. This very nature, however, encourages a lack of independent structure,
a lack of recognition by the established disciplines and sciences, and a free-form orientation
that often attracts the temporary interest of dilettantes who soon move onto other fancies without
leaving much of an important.” [70]

Interestingly, this passage can be readily applied to the current Serious Games eco-
system. An excitement across multiple disciplines has created a fractured field of study
[72]. Moreover, this fractured excitement has a role in creating somewhat superficial -
or as Wolf and Crook describe, ‘dilettante’ - research and developmental practices. This
is evidenced by limited empirical Serious Games evaluations [60, 77] and a lack of
integration of theories of learning into educational Serious Games [5].
A justification for the purposing of simulation based learning, alongside following
theories of experiential learning, is the affordance of holistic representation. Learners
participating in a simulation of policy and resource management with Richard Duke’s
Metropolis [10] for example, would be presented with a representation of all of the
processes inherent in this. Therefore, this would lead to a gestalt understanding of the
overall system. Again, this follows comparable justifications for Serious Games – espe‐
cially those that attempt to develop appreciation for social systems, or an empathy for
the social issues that arise in these systems [57, 73].
With analogous simulation-based learning then, there are parallels to be drawn with
contemporary Serious Games. There is a comparable diversity of application domains
 A Brief History of Serious Games 29

and interest across academic disciplines – in itself leading to tensions as the field
develops. Moreover, contemporary Serious Games follow similar justifications of expe‐
riential, problem-based, and situated learning theories. Serious Games indeed follows
the same trajectory of simulation-based learning. Moreover, the frequency with which
the two fields are discussed together, or conflated, speaks to an intertwined ongoing
development [72].
Serious Games as understood today, however, is built on the rise of digital technol‐
ogies. With this rise of digital learning practices, Serious Games’ focus extends beyond
representation of social systems and includes individualistic approaches to knowledge
acquisition and skills development, following behaviourist and cognitivist theories of
learning. At this point we can follow the trends identified in the foundational - yet anal‐
ogous - pre-history of Serious Games towards their digital manifestation. Before doing
so however, it is necessary to consider the seminal work of Clark C Abt.
In his book Serious Games Clark Abt [8] identifies justifications, contextual appli‐
cations, and conceptual definitions of contemporary Serious Games that are predictive,
if not directly foundational. Moreover, this work provides an historically situated anchor
point that illustrates both the movement from simulation-based learning to games-based
learning as separate practices and the seemingly natural transition from analogous to
digital Serious Games.

9 Emergence of Serious Games as a Field

“Games may be played seriously or casually. We are concerned with ‘Serious Games’ in the
sense that these games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are
not intended to be played primarily for amusement. This does not mean that serious game are
not, or should not be, entertaining.” [8]

Abt is often credited with coining the term ‘Serious Games’ [38, 69]. From the above
quote we can see that he provided the foundation for modern definitions of Serious
Games that frame them as games designed for a purpose beyond entertaining – though
these games are indeed still entertaining. What is striking however, when reading Abt’s
seminal work Serious Games, is his identification of the key justifications for using
contemporary Serious Games.
For Abt, Serious Games provide an opportunity to address the “motivational inad‐
equacies” of the American educational system. They also provide representational
affordances, and therefore different opportunities for engagement, of complex organi‐
zational or socio-political systems. Finally, bridging the historical purposing of play as
‘safe exploration’ and modern justifications of Serious Games, he suggests that “Simu‐
lations or games offer an inexpensive and relatively unthreatening means of experi‐
mentation” [8].
Moving on from the specific form of Serious Games, Abt also discussed their
contextual adoption. For instance, with educational Serious Games, Abt discusses the
teacher’s practices of their adoption arguing that: “the timing of a classroom game
should be made to maximize the game’s dramatic impact on the students” and the
importance of debriefing or “postgame analysis” [8]. Moreover, he paints the use of
these educational Serious Games as decidedly social affairs with learners collaborating
30 P. Wilkinson

or competing within the game. The contextual consideration and social approach of the
Serious Games Abt describes stands in near-contrast to contemporary practices, which
prioritise personalised and individualistic Serious Games design.
More broadly, Abt also identifies that one of the key considerations for Serious
Games adoption is not just their effectiveness, but their cost-effectiveness.
“[A]ssessing the value of games and whether they are, in fact, ‘worth the trouble’ means that
we must assess their cost-effectiveness, their efficiency in comparison to other instructional and
research methods.” [8]

Indeed, Abt’s broader considerations of an emerging Serious Game eco-system also

extend to the necessity of answering “skeptics” [8] – a process of legitimization that is
still apparent in contemporary work [66, 67]. Furthermore, in Abt’s initial unpacking of
the notion Serious, he refers to the games themselves, but also the pursuit of Serious
Games research. This, of course, has implications for the broader field of Serious Games
studies:
“The term ‘serious’ is also used in the sense of study, relating to matters of great interest and
importance.” [8]

It is worth noting that although Abt has a clear history in the field, his seminal work
which has become foundational in contemporary Serious Games pursuits is written
largely anecdotally. Moreover, his work still predominantly focussed on analogous
simulation games, speaking to his experience and the broader popularity of the approach
[78]. However, he does include digital Serious Games in his discussion and does so
rather straightforwardly. He states that “It is possible, of course, to make a computer
simulation of a game” [8]. Throughout his book Serious Games references to computer
based simulations as a logical, and expected extension of pre-existing simulation-based
learning practices.
America’s military had been experimenting with computer simulation-based
learning since the end of World War 2. In 1948, AIR DEFENSE SIMULATION was
completed and actively used for military training [79]. Of course this was a rather rudi‐
mentary visual representation, overlapping sophisticated mathematical models, of
enemy aircraft and anti-air weapons. This was followed by the development of CARMO‐
NETTE (Combined Arms Computer Model) in 1953 and deployed in 1956 which
expanded upon AIR DEFENSE SIMULATION to include a richer virtual representa‐
tion, including infantry, radio-communications, and tanks [79].
Considering the historical military application of simulation gaming and early mili‐
tary experiments with computer-modelling, it is not surprising that they began devel‐
oping what we may consider Proto-Serious Games as early as 1948. Moreover, at the
time of Abt’s writing updated Serious Games in 1985, it is less surprising that there were
“400 major computer war games” [8] already developed. For Abt then, digital Serious
Games were merely an extension of the previous simulation-based learning approach.
Writing in 1985 he was, however, disappointed when reflecting upon the previous
15 years of computer simulation-based learning development. In updating Serious
Games, Abt reflected on the 15 years since his original publication and lamented a lack
of progress in the “analytical, educational, evaluative and predictive quality” [8] of
computer simulation games. Furthermore, although he acknowledged that digital
 A Brief History of Serious Games 31

Serious Games were indeed being used in the classroom, they were overshadowed by
the development of computer games primarily for entertainment.
At this point in the chapter, with Abt’s Serious Games as our historical nexus, we
will move from discussing the non-digital incarnation of Serious Games and narrow our
focus onto the contemporary field. From the 1970s onwards, the development of Serious
Games became an increasingly reified field, distinct from both analogous play or game-
based practices; and other computer based instructional methods. During this time there
was the rise of the video game industry and human-computer interaction fields of study
occurring in parallel with the rise of the contemporary Serious Games research field.

10 From Analogue to Digital Serious Games

“[C]omputer games have become a larger mix of entertainment rather than instruction, and the
market for entertainment games with minimal instructional content has completely outdistanced
the market for instructional games, however entertainingly computerized”. [8]

At the time of writing Serious Games there was a tentative adoption of educational
Serious Games in the classroom. Lemonade Stand, a text based business simulation
game, was developed and used in the classroom in 1973; followed by, the now famous,
Oregan’s Trail in 1974 [38]. It is interesting that Abt expresses a disappointment in the
rise of games that prioritise entertainment, seemingly at the cost of instructional content.
This creates an interesting point of departure for the work of Abt for two reasons.
First, Abt was perhaps unable to predict the use of commercially available enter‐
tainment games in an educational context [80]. Secondly, most importantly, there is a
lack of consideration here for the potential of the rising entertainment games industry
in driving forward the Serious Games eco-system. There was indeed a rise of arcade
games and personal home consoles towards the latter end of the 20th century [81]. For
some this presented an opportunity for developing Serious Games that build upon pre-
exiting games and can be more widely disseminated through at-home consoles.
Following the trend of military experimentation, The Bradley Trainer was a game
developed in cooperation with the US Military and Atari. In 1980 Atari had just
published their arcade cabinet game Battlezone, in which players would use a periscope
attachment to target and shoot enemy vehicles. For the US Army’s The Bradley Trainer,
this same game mechanic was seen as a training simulator for, then new, Infantry
Fighting Vehicles (IFV). However, custom assets were added to the game including
replacing the fantasy shells of Battlezone, with ammunition types carried by actual IFVs
and enemy tank models were changed to reflect the silhouettes of real-world tank
types [82].
During this same time period, commercial organisations also began to repurpose
exiting game technologies for advertising. For instance, Pepsi Invaders was developed
in 1983 for sales employees of Coca-Cola as a means of fostering company moral in
relation to their Coca-Cola’s rival. As the title suggests, Pepsi Invaders was a near
identical copy of the classic video game Space Invaders - with alien spaceships replaced
with the letters P-E-P-S-I [38]. However, Pepsi Invaders was intended for internal usage
32 P. Wilkinson

whereas its contemporaries Kool-Aid Man, or Chex Quest were designed specifically
for brand promotion through home video game consoles [38].
With the examples of Kool-Aid Man and Chex Quest we see the emergence of Serious
Games designed for advertising commercial products specifically to children – a trend
that is apparent in modern advergaming research [83]. With these games, The Bradley
Trainer included, we can see the burgeoning influence of the commercial video games
market on Serious Games. In these cases, we can again see the historical trend of using
the engagement or motivational potential of games.
In the healthcare context, the early examples of using video games for rehabilitative
practices were framed around their engagement potential [84, 85]. For rehabilitation,
video games were seen as a way of overcoming initial resistance to therapy, distracting
the patients focus away from pain, and avoiding repetitive or boring rehabilitative exer‐
cises [84, 85]. Furthermore, video game usage in psychotherapeutic settings were
initially justified following the same logic of using play-based therapy. That is, video
games were seen as a means of building rapport, managing behaviour, or observing
children’s internalised thought processes through their game-play behaviour [53, 86].
Given the rising popularity of video games and the perceived engagement of the
player, there was an outcry discussing their potential addictive nature [87, 88]. As media
theorist, and socio-technological commentator Sherry Turkle describes it:
“There has been controversy about video games from the days of Space Invaders and Asteroids,
from the time that the games’ holding power provoked people who saw it as a sign of addiction
to become alarmed. The controversy intensified as it became clear that more than a “games
craze” was involved. This was not the Hula-Hoop of the 1980s” [88]

It is this notion of the video games “holding power” as described by Turkle that has
particular relevance here. For all of the discussion of video games engagement potential,
this was indicative of early scholarly works specifically discussing this engagement
potential. Indeed, Turkle’s work The Second Self is perhaps the first instance in which
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of ‘flow’, now ubiquitous in Serious Games research
[89, 90], was specifically applied to video games.
Preceding Turkle, Thomas W. Malone in 1980 had already begun researching the
underlying intrinsic motivational potential of video-games form a cognitive psycholo‐
gist perspective [91]. With this work Malone created a taxonomy of motivational prin‐
ciples from games that could be used to inform instructional design. This psychological
perspective of motivation was paralleled in Minds at Play, a book written by Geoffrey
and Elizabeth Loftus. In this they argue that part of the ‘holding power’ of video games
is due to their ‘partial reinforcement’ [87] of play behavior.
Loftus and Loftus argue that the rewarding but unpredictable nature of video games
feedback leads to a continued desire from the player. Interestingly, this is reflected in
modern neuroscience studies tracking the release of dopamine – understood as the
‘desire’ chemical – during game play [92]. Furthermore, this approach of random reward
intervals has been adopted by Serious Games to promote engagement [93, 94]. There‐
fore, as exemplified in Malone’s discussion of applications of instructional video games,
there was a rise of Serious Games that adopted this ‘games-as-motivation’ approach.
As identified by the work of Damien Djaouti and others, there was a rise in the
number of Serious Games for education from 1980 to 2002 [38]. However, there was
 A Brief History of Serious Games 33

an expression of dissatisfaction by some educational technology theorists, and

researchers, at the rather simplistic form of these games. For Seymour Papert – founder
of constructionism and pioneer of games design as a pedagogic approach – educational
Serious Games of the time were Shavian reversals [95]. That is, they adopted the worst
practices of their parent disciplines thus forming games that were primarily drill and
practice quizzes in which the player is motivated through behaviourist notions of rein‐
forcement [96].
It is worth noting that this, unfortunate, trend towards ludic incentivised quizzes –
or rote skills practices – is apparent today [75]. Indeed, the popular framing of Serious
Games as ‘chocolate-covered brocoli’, initially conceived by Amy Bruckman and
presented at the 1999 Games Developers Conference [97], is readily apparent in contem‐
porary Serious Games discourse [98]. Indeed, this approach is now often, derisively,
referred to as edutainment – the field of designing typically traditional media for educa‐
tional purposes. However, during this time period there were other independently
constructivist notions of educational Serious Games.
Seriously Considering Play [99], the seminal work of Lloyd Rieber was published
in 1996. In this work Rieber maps the constructivist notion of a microworld – a self-
contained, complete, and internal representation of a domain of interest – with the
fantastical representations of games. Rieber, and others [100] argued that his fantasy
element leads to engagement with the learning content. Here then, in the work of Rieber
we have a logical extension of the approach of Malone – that is the segmenting of
‘games’ into a set of heuristics that can be used to form Serious Games design.
This work to unpack, stratify demarcate, or otherwise categorize games into a set of
heuristics or design principles to be applied to educational games was a significant focus
for researchers at the time [101]. Moreover, when reviewing the modern trends in
Serious Games research, it is apparent that this trend has continued – though the models
are now more formalised [38, 102–104]. From the mid-1980s to late 1990s the continued
research into stratifying game elements to be purposed for their learning was paralleled
with a marked decline in the number of studies looking at non-digital educational Serious
Games [96] – emphasizing a shift towards the digital.
In 2001 Espen Aarseth published the article Computer Game Studies, Year One in
the first “first academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to computer game studies”
[105]. In this, as the title suggests, he positions 2001 as Year 1 of computer games studies.
That is, computer games had become a credible, international, academic field as
evidenced by the founding of the first peer-reviewed journal and international scholarly
conference dedicated to the field [105].This illustrates a step in academia to legitimize
the field of Game Studies – with obvious implications for the field of Serious Games.
Following the work of Aarseth, and borrowing his moniker, the following year can be
framed as Year One of Serious Games.

11 Serious Games Studies, Year One

In 2002, Rosemary Garris, Robert Ahlers, and James Driskell produced a comprehensive
review of pre-existing research into educational Serious Games [101]. This review is
34 P. Wilkinson

illustrative for three reasons. Firstly, Garris and Ahlers published the work whilst
working for the US Naval Air Warfare Center for Training Systems Division – demon‐
strating the military’s continued role in driving forward Serious Games research.
Secondly, they review the work of existing researchers with a view to develop a model
for educational Serious Games, in itself illustrative, but also it represents a shift towards
more formalised models. Finally, in the article though they describe their work as devel‐
oping instructional games they highlight the oxymoronic tensions of their terminology:
“Huizinga argued that the “fun element” underlies the intensity, absorption, and power of games
and that play is the direct opposite of seriousness. As we adapt games for serious purposes, we
must be aware of this tension between the world of play and the world of work. Thus, in one
sense, the term instructional game is an oxymoron.” [101]

In the article though they refer to their field as instructional games, their repeated
reference to the notion of ‘serious’ is very timely. In the same year Ben Sawyer would
release the foundational white paper Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through
Game-based Learning and Simulation [38, 69]. This paper and the soon to follow launch
of the Serious Games Initiative would cement the term Serious Games in popular
academic discourse when discussing the purposing of games. Here then, we enter what
is framed by most as the contemporary era of Serious Games [38, 69].
In 2002 the commercial video game market had grown significantly [106]. Therefore,
in Ben Sawyers discussion of the potential of Serious Games, he identified a need to
link the commercial video game industry with contextual applications [38, 69]. This
approach of comparing the approaches of the video game industry with educational
practitioners, highlighting how the former can inform the latter, became a key pillar at
the foundation of Serious Games.
Mark Prensky popularised this comparative discourse in his first book Digital
Game-Based Learning [44]. In this he explicitly compares the entertainment game and
educational trainer industries – highlighting the energy and excitement on display at the
Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3):
“Today’s trainers and trainees are from totally separate worlds. The biggest underlying dynamic
in training and learning today is the rapid and unexpected confrontation of a corps of trainers
and teachers raised in a pre-digital generation and educated in the styles of the past, with a
body of learners raised in the digital world of Sesame Street, MTV, fast movies and “twitch
speed” videogames.” [44]

For Prensky then it was not so much an opportunity for educational practitioners to
borrow from the games design principles and practices of the commercial video games
industry, it was a necessity. Of course, Prensky is now well-known in educational
Serious Games circles for furthering this rhetoric. Though perhaps slightly dogmatic, in
2001 he captured a desire – that had been growing since the work of Malone and Turkle
in the early 1980s – to apply commercial digital game design in educational contexts.
Currently, this same inter-contextual sharing of practices is readily apparent and formal‐
ised through the establishment of academia, industry, and application domain networks.
At this point in this chapter it is necessary to acknowledge that since starting the
discussing of the Serious Games history, post invention of the computer, we have
focused primarily on educational Serious Games. As is now apparent however, this is
fitting with the historical development of purposeful analogous or digital games and
 A Brief History of Serious Games 35

simulations. That is, the historical analogous games, and indeed the computer-based
proto-Serious Games were primarily designed for learning.
In Damien Djaouti and others [38] historical review of Serious Games, starting with
early computer games, from 1980 to 2002 they identified 953 Serious Games. Moreover,
of these 953 Serious Games ‘ancestors’ 65.8 % could be categorised as educational [38].
From Serious Games’ Year One, 2002, through to 2010 there was a marked increase in
the total number of Serious Games however, the proportion of educational games
dropped to 25.7 %. This reduction of the proportion of educational Serious Games was
of course the result of an increased diversity of purpose in the emergent field of Serious
Games.
Here then, we have a dramatic shift in the field of Serious Games as the diversity of
their application grew. For instance, as identified in their work Djaouti [38] identifies
that between 2002 and 2010, 30.7 % of the Serious Games developed were designed for
advertising. Indeed, following 2002 the newly founded Serious Games Initiative had a
role in developing the application of Serious Games in social activism, and healthcare.
In 2004 the first Games for Change conference was held and thus a formalised network
of non-profits and experts emerged to explore the potential of Serious Games for tackling
social issues [57]. In this same year the Games for Health conference was also first held
to explore the potential of Serious Games in healthcare [107].
Given the increasing application of Serious Games across multiple contexts scholars
in the emerging field began to wrestle with Serious Games definition. Currently, the
issue of defining Serious Games is still prevalent. However, definitions that are presented
are frequently a derivative or slight re-interpretation of ‘games that have a purpose
beyond entertainment’ [38, 69]. Indeed, these definitions are often traced to works of
David Michael and Sande Chen [108] or Michael Zyda [109]:
“Games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment, or fun as their primary purpose.” [108]
“Serious game: a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that
uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy,
and strategic communication objectives.” [109]

As with the other critical periods of history identified here, this wrestling over
defining the term Serious Game is a trend with historical origin that continues to this
day. The difficulty of defining ‘play’ or ‘games’ – or even the impossibility of the task
[110] - only adds to the difficulty of defining both ‘serious’ and ‘games’ in conjunction.
As Crookall suggests however, despite this difficulty in definition the field as a whole
will continued to move forward:
“I am sure that some dust will continue to fly for the next few years, maybe decades, and that
researchers and developers will continue to do their thing, despite the arguments one way or
the other with regard to the term ‘serious’.” [72]

12 Conclusion
“Serious gaming seems to have captured the imagination of, and drawn strong support from,
many well beyond the actual gaming world. Even governments are providing support for serious
games, with recent examples including a major thrust by the French Government, funding by
36 P. Wilkinson

the U.S. Institutes for Health and a European Union grant for the GaLA network. Surely that is
a good thing.” [72]

In Crookall’s review of the current state of Simulations and Gaming at the 40th
Anniversary Symposium of S&G, he directly acknowledges the rise of Serious Games.
In his article, as illustrated in his quote here, he optimistically addresses the popularity
of Serious Games and their inter-contextual appreciation. At the time of Crookall’s
writing this review, Serious Games had already become an established academic field
of study evidenced by the founding of The Serious Games Institute at Coventry Unive‐
sity in 2007.
Currently, as signposted by Crookall, Serious Games are an increasingly interwoven
practice across multiple domains. Indeed, Serious Games had transitions from explor‐
atory, or fringe, experiments, to an increasingly legitimized medium for education,
healthcare, and social change. In the coming together of these domains, the field of study
has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Starting with rather simple origins in the
convergence of computational modelling and non-digital game-based learning, now the
field of Serious Games is a nexus for multiple other disciplines – as evidenced by the
breadth of topics covered in this book.
If we were to revisit the slightly romanticised rhetoric of Richard Duke and Henry
Jenkin’s,their positioning of games as a ‘language of the future’ [10] and ‘the new lively
art’ [9] has become manifest in the contemporary field of Serious Games. Serious Games
research and practices are beginning to shape the practices of the contexts they are used
in. However, as we have identified in this chapter, like Duke and Jenkins, perhaps we
could have seen this coming. There are historical antecedents to Serious Games in the
form of purposing of play and games. Additionally, beginning with these antecedents,
we can see trends emerge, and the same challenges facing previous researchers are still
apparent.
There is still a pre-eminence of educational applications for Serious Games and the
research field itself is still driven forward by external partnerships – particularly the
military. Moreover, the difficult of pin-pointing the first Serious Game as we understand
it today, speaks to current debates in their definition. Again, a debate that has existed
since the researchers began to study ‘play’. Another key characteristic that is apparent
through the history and pre-history of Serious Games is an optimistic sense of expect‐
ancy of the potential of games. This sense of expectancy was perhaps best captured by
the work of Duke and Jenkins – written 33 years apart. So it can be said then that games
and by extension Serious Games are a language and a medium of the future but with a
rich and storied past.

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